Posted
by
michael
on Sunday September 09, 2001 @10:20AM
from the is-there-any-other-way dept.

Joe writes: "Someone introduced me to a new game called Robocode and now I'm hooked as well as my 17 year old son. We are both learning Java while playing the game or I should say while building our Java robots. The game is setup to teach you how to handle events, how to create inner classes, and other Java techniques to build more sophisticated Java bots. I have a c++ background so I've been helping my son with his bots, but he's catching on very fast. It's turning out to be a cool and easy way to get the kid clued into programming and best of all its free." I'll bet if the little Logo turtles shot at each other, I would have had more fun programming as a kid.

hmmm.. making mods is cool stuff.. really u get to learn a lot.. check out planetquake.com and the sites hosted there.. that reminds me.. we can make a mod to teach kids how to make mods and do battle.. kinda like robowars.. but simpler than the current methods used in quake.. with an ide.. gosh.. it's got me itchy:)

There was a thing just like this for Amigas in the late 80's that used a crippled version of C for the bots. You could use "radar", shoot things, move, etc.. a lot of fun - and a good way to learn C.

And, before that, i actually wrote my own version of a programmable bot game for C64, using a homemade 'machine' language. no slick graphics here - you watched the memory space (each bit in the arena's memory space lit up as a single pixel on the 340x280 screen).

All of this based on a Scientific American article about a phenomenon called "Core Wars".

Was I the only one who went to a college with this type of game? Net trek was fun and all, but even the most relentless ogger needs a break. A friend of mine created a robot wars game in the late 80's for a project in compiler design. You wrote C code; moving the robot, firing patterns, etc. The game had 2d graphics, etc. It was pretty cool actually. If I recall correctly the game engine could handle up to 8 different robots. I wonder what other schools used their Connection Machine for....

A good way for each person to tout his programming skills. The project was updated over the years by each new class of ACM members. Kind of like a university of maryland cult legacy thing in the com sci department. Anyway, I was under the impression that pretty much every school had their own version of robot wars. I know at one point, U Texas had a world wide robot wars gaming contest based on similar concepts. This was about 18 months or so before lego bots got popular. They truely cunning would like at the compiler code and figure out how many instructions were executed per time unit and craft state machines accordingly.

I was pretty fresh out of college with my CS degree in those days, and was fortunate enough to work at a company that was attempting to do some Amiga development. That game sucked huge quantities of time from our small three person development staff. That said, we were probably all better coders due to those experiences.

There was a game I played as a kid on my macintosh. It had the same general idea, and i've been looking for something to replace it. Theres a new game called RoboForge out, but it costs money, and doesn't look all that interesting.
Thank You!

Java gui support is slower than your typical native gui support, it doesn't make Java technology is a whole flawed.

True; the almost-but-not-really-OO quality of Java(tm) is what REALLY snuffs it.

The S-L-O-W UI stuff is just added sucktitude.

Today's young 'uns should be learning real languages, such as C for procedural programming, Smalltalk for OO, and Lisp for functional programming. Then, if the job market is still looking for people who can write scripts for virtual machines, go learn Java(tm).

By the way, did you know that Perl, Tcl/tk, and Awk can be Written Once, and Run Anywhere(tm)? I wonder if Sun knows this? I hope they sue the pants of those bastards for stealing the idea from Java(tm).

Why waste your time learning a language you will never ever use? If you are going to have to learn Java to get a job why not learn Java in the first place.

Yes Perl, Python, TCL (and you forgot rebol!) all are pretty damned portable too. Life is great when you don't have to tie yourself to one platform with a crappy language like VB anymore heh? Only if they some slick IDE like jbuilder.

Most edutainment is really pretty boring, but this seems like a good conceptI think I've heard of something similar based on Z80 processors. Are there many other projects like this (especially for other languages)?

Mindrover from Loki has the same idea. The difference is really that it doesn't require you to learn a full programming language, but allows you to program your robots through a graphical building-block kind of interface, with counters, gates and stuff.

Yes, robocode is not the first, see DMOZ's [google.com] entry. Corewars was perhaps the most famous. Okay, now we can move on to talking about Robocode's merits instead of talking about its family tree.

I'm not sure you can compare corewars to this or the others... With corewars, the actual code is what's doing battle for it's own survival... it's not 'running a tank' or anything, and the playing field is memory space.

Lots of kids learned to code this way. Back in the days of Pascal in my high school I found Tom Poindexter's C-Robots and learned C that way (thinking it was pretty much just Pascal with some shortcut characters like braces instead of BEGIN/END). It's a funny coincidence that someone introduced you to the game within a day that somebody interviewed the guy behind the game at kuro5hin, however.:)

I couldn't agree more! I recently took 15-100 (introduction to programming with java) at CMU, and we had to use Karel: The Java Edition [pace.edu] for the first half of the semester..

Considering most of the people there, such as myself, were already well versed in at least one other programming language, we were needless to say bored out of our minds. By the end of the semester, we spoke our mind at The Fence [24.2.137.94] (you people familiar with CMU will enjoy this..)

Having taken 15-100 in the summer session, I got to be among the first set of victims of Karel. The incoming class now will have to suffer with Karel for the first half of their semester.. it's not a bad concept, but it really could be condensed into a couple days. But DJ Slater is a cool guy, they'll have fun (as much as they won't want to admit it).

People are still using Karel the Robot? Holy Hell, that brings back memories. I used that circa 1985 on some sort of PDP-something that the highschool had in the basement. The funny thing is I was just talking to a guy about it on the train this morning:). "Hey, there's a turn right but where's turn left?" "Oh, that's the first lesson, write a procedure to turn left by turning right three times." Ick. Pickbeeper!

Wow, someone finally gets it, make an educational game that is actually interesting! Seriously, id bet if developers/companies/whoever made educational games that were actually fun to play, they could do well, esp. dealing with computers......programming......stuff like that.

I ran Robocode under the OS X terminal using the Linux install/run options, worked like a charm, although it seems that the text in the preferences window got cut off for some reason. If you're using a G4, I highly recommend maxing out the FPS and watching the game fly.

There was a whole range of products out there along these lines back in the mid 80s. I recall one from Origin Systems (back when they were independant) that enphesised the game aspects rather than the programming aspects but nonetheless tought basic programming concepts using a BASIC-like language. As a teaching aid it was somewhat lacking but as a game, it rocked. Battles ere fought in a dufimentry 3D universe set around Origin Systems headquarters in Austin Texas. They even offered the ability to upload your robots for competition against other players where the stats were available on a BBS where members could review their rankings. Granted the online competitions weren't realtime and Blizard's battle.net is a far cooler forum for online gaming, but all that proves is that technology marches on and that Origin Systems was way ahead of their time. I think the game was called OMEGA although I'm not sure.

Origin Systems was way ahead of their time. I think the game was called OMEGA

Before that I believe there was a game for the Apple II called (I believe) Robot Wars. It had its own programming language and you programmed your robots to fight and move in a little arena. This was in the early 80's at latest, so I believe this would well predate the game you're thinking of.

It's called TopCoder, located at www.topcoder.com (use my name khaladan as referrer if you sign up). You can participate in a contest usually once or twice a week with 7 other programmers trying to solve various problems of increasing difficulty.

It's based on time. Whoever submits code the fastest, gets the most points. Of course, then there's a challenge round where you inspect other people's code for bugs, and if you find one, supply input that will produce bad output (or crasht the program).

It's a greate contest. Currently you can choose either Java or C++ to program solutions in.

Plus, if you get 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place in your room (of max 8 people), you get $150, $75, or $25 dollars, respecitively. I myself have not been playing very long but I got 2nd place once, and sure enough, a check came about two weeks later for $75.

So, sign up and try it... use my name, khaladan, as the person who referred you.

This reminds of of one of the programming projects I had to do for my introductory C++ course in school was an artillery simulator. The final program had to input the angles you wanted to launch the shell, and you had to hit certain targets around campus. It was pretty fun.

Java robot-programming systems have been around for a few years. My room mate created one three years ago called
J Robots [mobydisk.com]. His inspiration was the C-Robots which many people have already mentioned in their comments.

There are a few other Java robot systems listed on Dmoz.org [dmoz.org].

In 7th grade Comp Sci class (only in San Jose, CA!) we used Robot Wars on Apple ]['s that did similar things. Robots would be in a 2-dimensional plane, had a motor, radar and a cannon. You could control these things with code. Your bots would fight each other on the screen. By the way, I had the best bot in the class! I even beat the bots built by the teacher's sons, who were CS students at San Jose State and he always bragged about them.

Anyways, I've been craving a modern version of this for some time now and haven't been able to find anything. I've thought of building one but I'll have to check this one out.

I was gonna pay to go to a Non-credit Java course at the local college (I'm only in high school). I'll probably still go but this will definatley help. and being a amer it should be pretty fun to.
c-bob out

For those who don't care about Java but want to program robots, there is a similar program called realtimebattle [sourceforge.net] which lets you write robots in any language you want (ok, any language which can read and write standard input and output).

Why not make it be multi-lingual? Why just Java? Supply an API that any language can use. This issue comes up whenever stored procedures are mentioned and somebody wants to use another language besides PL/SQL or Java or whatever.

In middle school, I built robots for a pascal-based fighting environment such as this one.

I notice now that I was merely imitating the coding practices found in the example code and the code that my friends and I shared.
I was learning interfaces and code structure in a very oblique manner.
I wasn't learning program structure or timing.

It was a lot of fun, but I didn't walk away from the experience with anything more than a cursory memory of what code is.

The learning company had a cool game out that you had to put different gates together to make robots to complete quests. It was non violent. Very fun! I'm not sure why they don't sell it anymore. I wish I could get a copy for my neices and nephews.
anyone know what happened to this game??

And I thought I was the only one who had played this! It was called Robot Odyssey, I believe, for teaching logic and the basics of electronic components. I actually called them (The Learning Company) to see if I could get a copy. The people that I talked to hadn't even heard of it, and said that there were "no plans" to re-release a game by that name. Currently, the only way that I have found to play it is via Commodore emulator... If anyone has found a way to get a PC version of this, I would also love to hear about it.

It's an incredibly addictive robot battle game. You generally build robots with a GUI interface, but for serious hackers there is an object oriented definition language called Ice that compiles into the same VM code as the GUI builder.

Violence in a game is always seen as a terrible thing. Especially in this day and age with violence everywhere, I really don't see 2 tanks shooting each other as incredibly violent. Have you played Soldier of fortune or any recent 1st person shooter? You can de-limb a victim and see the blood splatter against the wall.

Even if this game is violent think of what it is doing, it's trying to get people involved in programming and computers in general. I attend an engineering school and have been amazed at the number of people that have no computer knowledge of any sort, especially in a technological field. Things like this could get people involved at a high school level in computers, so violence is bad, but sometimes the benefits are worth the cost.

I waited years to find a copy of this game. Unfortunately it didn't age well -- the robots are programmed with logic gates and IC's, and they don't shoot each other -- but it's fascinating nonetheless.

Well, I guess kinds were taught to program with flowergames in the 60's, the "stoned peace" age. So it's kind of logical that they learn it with violence now, we are of cource in the "I'm on speed and very aggressive" age;)

I've seen a lot of ones like this, but the one I liked the most was AT-Robots. It was based on Assembler, and it was entertaining enough that even though assembler is hard to learn I actually learned *some* of it by playing this. The address: http://www.necrobones.com/atrobots/

http://robocode.turbochicken.com [turbochicken.com] - This is a site that me and some of my Java buddies are putting together for fun. We've just started it - but already have most of the back end done. Please stop by and check it out. We're looking for suggestions and ideas before we officially launch it. So, please read the stories on the homepage to see what we have in mind for the site then send feedback to the email address posted on the homepage. Also, I've compiled a list of links to other RoboCode websites, tutorials, and discussion forums. By the way, the upload/download and save features are disabled for a few days. Check back towards the end of the week to start actually exchanging source and class files.

There are a number of these kinds of games. Other people have mentioned Crobots, Jrobots, and a dozen others I've never heard of. One of my favorites was RoboWar [robowar.co.uk] for the Mac, because it used a very small stack-based language, designed in such a way that the processor speed of the robot was limited. Each robot could execute only a limited number of operations per time step, which meant that efficient implementation of your algorithm was the biggest factor in how well your robot did. The author of the game also held annual tournaments that aspiring RoboWarriors could submit their entries to, and see how they fared against the state of the art. That meant that the robots, even with very limited computational capacity, had a very rapid evolution toward very sophisticated algorithms. Early robots just roved around and fired whenever they saw something in their sights. As time went on, the entries seen in the tournaments were able to camp in corners, dodge incoming fire, "lead" their targets, and employ inter-robot communication for team battles.

Learning throgh RoboWar to produce advanced behaviour out of a slow and limited language was a great help when I later went on to dabble in embedded systems--the skill set required is very similar.

How about an updated version of Rocky's Boots? Oh wait, that has a boot that kicks things, that could be violent. How about The Other Side? Oh wait, spies, bombs, environmental exploitation... I guess changing the graphics to throw flowers and compliments at each other to see who makes the other smile most might just be interpreted as a surrogate for missile weapons and damage.

I knew there'd be some self-righteous pollyanna that'd react to the title. Astonishing how everyone already knows how to raise everyone else's kids.

I second this! I played Rocky's Boots on my Apple//e when I was in college. Even as an EE major I couldn't finish some of the puzzles. (The fact that propogation delay was modelled poorly didn't help at all...)

Cool, Google found this site [warrenrobinett.com] which has links to Apple emulators and the Rocky's Boots disk image. Time to go kick some... um, brightly colored shapes.

First of all, take a look at the alternatives to "learning through violence."

1) Barney. Or, as I like to call it "unlearning through sensory numbing." Obviously not a good choice for anyone, at all, period.

2)Not learning, although still through violence. Example: most pointless video games. I say most, because I am still a firm believer in the idea that viedo games are great for the imagination, among other things.

This leaves us with the healthy alternative of:

C)Learning through violence! Yes, blowing up giant robots is FUN, and most kids would be thrilled to pull the trigger and show off his or her prowess on the virtual battlefield. I know I would love to destroy a an opposing process or script with the knack of my own creation. What is the big problem, when the kid would more than likely spend his or her time on a (possibly) less productice game? I say that this is a great idea. People learn better when they are having fun with what they are doing.

Finally, it is not "rewarding" the child for following through with a violent act - it is simply a mode by which the student can learn a new skill. Haven't you ever built an erector set? Most of them involved the construction of battlefield tanks or other war machines. It just happens to be one of the best-suited applications for teaching programming.

The violence is completely unnecessary, and can warp an impressionable young mind.

The kid is seventeen. He most likely has a driver's license by now. The violence is not completely unnecessary, as it is not uncommon for teenagers (even those younger than himself) to love action movies or other films and TV shows with violence. I'm sure a lot of us did when we were that age and turned out AOK. In this case the subject matter may be precisely what makes the game more fun and entertaining. Create a game about puppy dogs and ice cream and see how many teenagers are interested enough to pick it up and learn a new programming language...

<zealot>
And seventeen is a perfect age for us to get a youngin into Uncle Sams Misguided Children. Learn 'em to shoulder an M1 and an M16 and blast those little commie bastards. Ah, the young are so impressionable.
</zealot>

And in one year, he'll be legally able to smoke --- cigarettes --- and join the army and kill people. He still won't be able to drink in most parts of the US, though. Go figure.

The people who complain about the violence here are the same ones who turn a blind eye or say "what're ya gonna do?" when teens use real violence on real people.

I look forward to teaching my kid programming with competetive elements to add fun. They don't all have to be violent. Imagine a large field with nuggets and seams of gold hidden here and there, a sensory API for "detecting" gold, and robots in competition to gather all they can.

When I was in 3rd and 4th grades, way back, we had Apple ][ and IBM PC Machines, and we were taught BASIC, and LOGO, both turtle and mathematic instructions. We had district-wide competitions. Computing was for more than teaching productivity software and reader rabbit-crap.

This is something that has been lost from the curriculum, and should be regained.

Joe's son is 17, and while still developing, I'd venture that any associations he's made with violence and good were made long before he reached this age. Give the kid and parent some credit, the kid is an adolescent and hasn't rejected hanging out with his Dad- they must be doing something right!

But don't you think that there are better ways of teaching programming than encouraging unnecessary violence? There is enough sex and violence present in the media already without intermingling it with education.

It's a game, he either learns to code while killing "non-living" robots, or doesn't learn to code while killing humans playing counter-strike.

And everyone knows that video games *do not* contribute to violent acts. I have been playing violent video games for years, and over those years my violent tendancies have deminished.

I think not. Sure there's enough violence, but never enough sex! I'll tell you what there is enough of though, self-righteous pricks who think they should be the thought police, and that they have the magical rules as to how everybody should raise their own children. That and trolls, so you've got to go either way.

I'll tell you what there is enough of though, self-righteous pricks who think they should be the thought police, and that they have the magical rules as to how everybody should raise their own children.

While I disagree with the poster's hand-wringing about violence, I have to defend his right to judge others. The biggest problem with society today is not sex, violence, the DMCA or any of that: It's the "who am I to judge" crap. It's everyone's responsibility to judge EVERYTHING and EVERYONE in society, but be willing and prepared to be judged by others.

Notice that the poster was not calling for laws to be passed, but it is his absolute right and responsibility to judge on a personal basis what he feels is right and wrong. When enough people feel the same way, society can be transformed.

He has every right to his opinions, but when everybody is open to judgement from everybody else, you end up with the worst form of mob rule, where a conservative status quo is achieved, and nobody will do anything that could concievably cause waves, as they don't want to rock the boat and be judged themselves.

you end up with the worst form of mob rule, where a conservative status quo is achieved, and nobody will do anything that could concievably cause waves, as they don't want to rock the boat and be judged themselves.

Certainly it is possible for that to happen, but on balance, I think we would have a stronger and better society when everyone is open game.

The prototype example from my life is that I used to have a very good friend who flat-out cheated on his wife. As far as I was concerned, he showed himself to be unworthy of my friendship. What was incredible to me was that all of his other friends rallied around him, and "supported him" through his "trying time". The man was total scum! I pretty much let him know what I thought, and told him that he should clean up his act and beg forgiveness. But he didn't, and destroyed his marriage.

I couldn't believe his so-called "friends" made it so easy for him to be a total asshole. I believe that being a true friend is steering them away from bad decisions, not enabling them. If all his friends and family totally ostracized him until he owned up to his responsibility, he would have been much better off, and learned a valuable lesson.

And yes, it is "his business" if he wants to cheat on his wife. But it is my business how I react to it, and whether I tolerate that behavior around me.

Make no mistake -- most of evil happens because it's tolerated. On a slightly different subject, I detest the word "tolerance" as its used today, as in we need to "tolerate" other minorities. The is the absolute worst word the PC crowd could pick. It should be "coexist with" or something similar. Preaching "tolerance" enforces the notion that I'm supposed "tolerate" bad behavior, because "who am I to judge". Argh!

Humans have solved conflicts using violence for hundreds of thousands of years. Why should we drop that great tradition now? Why should we forget its effect through suppression in the media? Is it better for me to take your stuff by way of bribery, legal trickery or by knocking you down and taking it? I suggest that the more honest approach is through the violence of knocking you down and taking it (it may result to that anyway).

Violence is an honest viable form of conflict resolution. I suggest that people learn when it is appropriate. Given that, it is not appropriate in school, in the houses of congress, or in the board room.

Violence may be appropriate when dealing with a group that has extremely different background and values from you own. Violence is a very basic conflict resolution style that everyone from Asian, to African, to European, to American Indian, to canine, to sheep, to lion understand. I would guess that any form of life capable of memory and self preservation, even alien, would understand violence.

Violence is in itself not wrong.

Are battling robots really violent? What's the difference if we settle our conflict through dumping money into lobbiest, or dumping our money into battlee bots; in the end, the organisation with the most money wins.

Well, I'm sure if little boys were interested in programming pink unicorns to run around kissing daisies in meadows, then a wonderful teaching tool could be constructed around that very concept. As it is, though, a "battle" provides a setting that motivates young boys to get into the educational activity enough to make it worthwhile.

Besides, having grown up in a house where my parents didn't really censor my cable access, I find it hard to believe that shielding kids from all possible influences really makes a difference. I never got into fights in highschool or college, despite watching Rocky I - V. I've always felt that an intellectual approach to conflict is far better than a violent one.

How could that be, when I watched The Exorcist and Jaws before I was even a teenager! Why, I even used to watch The Roadrunner back when old Wile E Coyote used to actually hit the ground!

The key to raising your kids to avoid exerting violent behavior isn't to shield them from all possible observations of it. It isn't even that helpful to have them avoid board and video games where violence is a goal.

The key is to teach your kids the difference between fantasy and reality. "Yeah, it's fine to go watch a Jackie Chan movie, but when you leave the theatre, don't kick your friends and pretend that you're in a karate fight." "Play Quake and Duke Nuke'em, but remember that they're just video games."

Additionally, build loving trusting relationships with your children and encourage them to build similar relationships with others. Teach them how to think their ways through problems, rather than giving up and reacting violently.

OK, I think this "violence is bad" argument is being taken way beyond a sane or healthy level here. You call this game violent? Did you ever play Tank for Atari as a kid? This is game a remake of that game with modifiable AI and better graphics. You aren't looking at horrific scenes of brutal warfare; you see these small robots shooting little pellets at one another with a decreasing counter above them. Hardly what I would consider violent. Suppose kids were not exposed what you consider violence. How would they deal with the real world? They couldn't, they'd probably go crazy and we'd be worse off than we are now. I don't know about you, but I was technically a kid when I played Wolfenstein 3d, Spear of Destiny, Doom, Doom2, and Quake. You fail to reallise the premise of these games, they clearly state that you have two options: kill, or be killed, they do not present you with the peaceful resolution option because it is assumed to have failed. A situation we would hope never to put into but one we as a species are innately curious about. I also don't feel these games had any negative affect on me whatsoever, in fact, they gave my life direction: they inspired me to study Computer Science, and I'm sure there are millions, if not billions, of kids playing violent games every day. How many are cold-hearted killers? Very few. Due to the fact that Joe appears to be a good parent (helping his son pick up some skills that will be very handy later in life), his son is almost a zero risk for causing another Columbine. This debate against violence has been taken beyond reason. It has become more of a witch-hunt.

But don't you think that there are better ways of teaching programming than encouraging unnecessary violence?

Violence is not intrinsically immoral. For example, using violence to defend my home against a criminal is absolutely morally justified on the small scale, and similiarly defending the country during WW/II on the large scale.

It's how violence is used that determines whether it is appropriate or not, and games can help reinforce these lessons. For example, "Doom" was a positive game because you were defending the world against invading demons. On the other hand, "Postal" was probably a bad game for kids, because it was encouraging running down innocent pedestrians.

Violence is intrinsic to our nature, and just ignoring natural impulses is not the way to teach morality. The morality of when violence is appropriate should be taught.

And yes, I believe Ghandi and similar pacifists are idiots. Just because Ghandi was lucky doesn't mean his philosophy was any good. Passive resistance would have done the jews a lot of good against the Nazis.

Do you seriously believe that the kids will really regard this kind of "violance" as the same kind of violance that you're talking about?

This is not violance against humans. This is violance against virtual robots. And the kids can even take an in-depth view at what is actually going on. If they see that it's just an integer counter being counted down when you're hit (or whatever, I've not looked at the code yet), I don't think they'll see this as violance, no matter what the graphical output looks like.

I don't believe in violance caused by computer games anyway (they might be the trigger, but not the cause), but claiming that encouraging kids to develop a virtual robot is like encouraging them to shoot their classmates is ridiculous.

I say, reward our children for their good deeds with positive reinforcement. The violence is completely unnecessary, and can warp an impressionable young mind.

If this game involved the murder of others than yes it is violent. Unfortunately, its a game with badly rendered tanks. I really think its important to realize the difference between reality and fantasy. The more PC thugs try to blur that line the more confused kids we have.

Children are notoriously suceptible to the power of suggestion,

Ever consider that your assumptions might be doing to the impressionable?

riiiiight, lets completely suffocate kids by placing them in this controlled sterilize environment and manipulate their actions at every step, cover their eyes to whatever you don't want them to see, god forbid we allow young impressionable kids to live in the real world.

What complete bullshit! morality is not something you learn through positive reinforcement, morality is something you develop on your own. if we can just point to the bible and throw the rule book at everyone who behaves from what you perspective immoral then it's not really a problem with personal morality as it is following orders and brainwashing people.

Hmm.. it's a message board, a BBS.. not a air-traffic-control system. I am sure that more time and effort can be put into better text search tool (ie. off the shelf alternatives exist), but who cares?

I just want to see the news, read crap from trolls (such as yourself), and hopefully learn a thing or two.

You put a lot of effort into this post, but you haven't offered a single suggestion on improvments, only shot down the efforts of many. I guess some people are born to build, some are born to tear down.

LOL! Now this is an ironic comment to find on a site that is so viciously anti-Windows/pro-Open Source. "Linux is way better than Windows, because Windows occassionally crashes. But hey, cut Slashdot some slack - who cares if they are down now and then?"

I have, in a P2P fashion, where people could host arenas on their PCs and bots get submitted in the network, battle in others areans, and then move to other areans on the network once they are beaten or dethroned. The owner gets incremental reports on how their roaming robot is doing, either getting the crap beat out of it left and right or is king of the arena and unbeatable at 167.89.45.19.